Acclaimed filmmaker Oliver Stone has declared he was no longer feeling the love from audiences and may “call it a day” on big and small screen films.

Speaking exclusively to News Corp Australia, the multi Academy Award winning American director said at 70 he was maybe getting passed it and felt movie goers were gravitating more to television and that format had a better future.

Stone was speaking after the release of his four-hour television documentary The Putin Interviews, the second part of which screens next Sunday on SBS, for which he was granted unprecedented access to the Russian president in multiple interviews filmed over two years.

It was the reception in the United States to his Putin monologues, branded by some as too sympathetic to the Russian leader, that prompted his apparent cinema retirement.

Of course he won’t; the temptation to keep producing his agitprop will be too great. But even if he does, oh well. Throughout his long and distinguished Stone has not met an anti-American dictator he hasn’t liked and an aspect of America that he hasn’t liked to bash. Stone might be more talented than other creators, but he will hardly leave an empty niche – or rather the whole main nave of the cathedral of modern culture, as devoted it is to biting the hand that feeds it.